


To Infinity, Not Beyond

by teand



Series: Darcy Lewis, Agent of SHIELD [4]
Category: Avengers 2012, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Comic Book Science, F/M, M/M, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, yes I've been reading the Hawkeye comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 16:12:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1864101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teand/pseuds/teand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tony's right."</p><p>"Sometimes," Phil agreed, sitting down beside Clint on the edge of terrace, their backs to Manhattan. He handed over one of the two beer he'd brought out with him. "Specifically?"</p><p>Clint stared up at the night sky for a moment, took a long drink, and finally said, "Reed Richards is a dick</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Infinity, Not Beyond

**Author's Note:**

> Although this is part of the Darcy Lewis: Agent of SHIELD 'verse, Darcy herself makes only a minor appearance in the story.

"Tony's right."

"Sometimes," Phil agreed, sitting down beside Clint on the edge of terrace, their backs to Manhattan. He handed over one of the two beer he'd brought out with him. "Specifically?"

Clint stared up at the night sky for a moment, took a long drink, and finally said, "Reed Richards is a dick."

Years of practice kept Phil from smiling. "For discovering multiple realities running parallel to this one?"

"For being so fucking cheerful when he announced that there were worlds where you didn't make it. I can tell you something else about those worlds; they're worlds where I ate a bullet."

 _Not in all of them,_ Phil thought as Clint locked his eyes on the bottle, fingers working at the label. Not if Richard's theory of infinite possibilities, of infinite worlds was accurate. But even one Clint taking his own life was one too many. "If there's worlds where I didn't make it," he said, after a moment, "then there's worlds where we didn't make it. Where we never met, or we were never more than colleagues. Two guys with unique skill sets who saved the world for the same company. Worlds where..." He thought of the most ridiculous life he could imagine. "... you _acquired_ a dufflebag of cash, bought an old apartment building in Bed Stuy, got adopted by a one-eyed dog, and all but adopted a... a rich teenage archer, who you also named Hawkeye because why not, and the two of you fought off the Russian mob."

"The Russian mob?" Clint snorted. "In Bed Stuy?"

Phil leaned in, pressing his shoulder against Clint's. "And they're wearing pale blue track suits."

"The Russian mob are wearing pale blue track suits?" Another snort. This a little less derisive and more amused. "So, all by ourselves, him and me..."

"Her."

"Hawkeye junior's a girl? Right."

They sat quietly for a moment. Phil listened to the spill of sound from inside the penthouse, where Dr. Foster's... Jane's voice rose with Tony's, demanding to see the math. Listened to the wind whistle through the A on the building below. Thought about infinite worlds. "There are worlds," he murmured, building the possibilities with the words, "where I have nothing to do with the Avengers and took Fury up on his offer of a new team on a refurbished Bus. Worlds where we didn't find out about Hydra infiltrating back in the fifties and, when it came to a head, they were dug in so deep that taking them down took down SHIELD as well. Worlds where the Chitari won." _Where I didn't get you back. Where I lost you to Loki._

"If you're trying to make me feel better, you suck at it."

He couldn't seem to stop. "Worlds where it's you and Natasha..."

Clint shifted, turning to face him, two calloused fingers over Phil's mouth. "We tried that here, if you'll recall, and the occasional you, me, and Natasha when she needs us aside, infinite mes are too fond of our balls to try that again."

"Worlds where you're a woman or I am or we both are."

He grinned at that, eyes crinkling at the corners. "Agent Phyllis Coulson. You'd be a kickass woman."

Impossible not to smile back. "At least I'd get to keep my hair."

Clint's hand rose and fingers slipped through what remained of the hair he'd gotten to keep in this world. Phil pushed up into the touch. "But we're still together as women," Clint declared. "Because I don't want to live in a world where we aren't."

The absolute surety in his husband's voice eased muscles tense since Richards had announced the inevitability of his death. "You don't have to," he murmured, leaning in.

There was a time when he'd have been more circumspect. When the chance of someone looking out onto the terrace would have kept him a careful distance from Clint least questions arise about his objectivity. There were probably worlds where he continued to maintain that distance, but dying gave a man perspective and, here and now, on this world, he revelled in the heat of Clint's mouth, in the pressure of his lips, in the touch of his hands.

Ignoring Phil's quiet protest, Clint pulled away. One hand cupping Phil's jaw, the other a warm touch against his waist, he sighed as he touched their foreheads together. "When I think of all those mes without you..."

"Don't." Fingers wrapped around a muscular forearm, Phil traced the ridge of a recent scar with his thumb. "Think about the worlds where it didn't take us so god-damned long to get to us. Worlds where you went out of the circus and into the army and we ended up in the same unit and we'd have been headed for a dishonourable discharge had Nick not stepped in and given us a place together. Worlds where you got the loving childhood you deserved and we met in high-school – I was a senior, you were a freshman..."

"You got held back?"

"Shut up." So the ages didn't work. It was a fantasy world. "Senior, freshman, and it nearly killed me keeping my hands off you and then we lost touch and met again in Nick's office and I didn't have to. Keep my hands off you." Just in case Clint hadn't realized what he hadn't had to do. Or better yet," he continued over Clint's soft huff of laughter, "worlds where saving the world isn't on us. Worlds without super-villains or aliens, where we're teachers or lawyers or..."

"Cowboys?"

"...short order cooks and we have two kids – a brother and sister, we pulled out of the system."

"And a house with a yard?" Clint sat back and reclaimed his beer, stretching an arm across Phil's back. 

"And a house with a yard." Phil leaned into the support. "And a van."

"Not a van. You were doing so well."

"With two kids and a dog, we need a van."

"That's different, you never mentioned the dog. But it's purple. "

"The dog?"

"The van."

A sudden burst of noise pulled their attention back to the windows. Darcy now stood in front of Jane, hands on her hips, glaring up at Richards. They could see her mouth moving but couldn't make out more than a staccato rhythm and the occasional hard consonant. 

"She's not shouting," Clint noted.

"So it seems."

"She must be really pissed."

"Odds are."

Like Tony, Darcy lived loud. Smart people headed for cover when she dropped the volume. As she neared the end of her probationary status, Phil found himself looking forward to the day when she had seniority enough to be set on the junior agents.

"At least she hasn't gone for her taser."

"I've tried to reinforce the belief that she needs to use her words."

Clint snickered and took a drink. "Seems to be working. Our little girl is growing up."

Although his feet remained in place, Dr. Richards' upper body had begun to move backwards, slowly stretching out of proportion. Tony and Steve stood by the bar, looking amused. Tony had one hand on Steve's arm, holding him in place. 

"You think there's a world where Tony and Steve ever do something about that unresolved sexual tension?" Clint wondered.

Worlds where Pepper had walked away and Darcy had never come back into their lives. Or had come back and things were different. "Worlds where you're dating Darcy?"

Waving off help, Clint bent forward to let the beer drip from his nose and gasped, "I'm fifteen years older than she is." 

"I'm seven years older than you."

"Seven is eight less than fifteen and beside, after ten it gets creepy."

"Tony's seventeen years older than Steve."

"And eight years older than Pepper and significantly older than the Swedish handball team." Straightening, Clint pressed the back of his wrist against each nostril. "He's had practise at creepy."

Phil couldn't deny that. Although Tony'd settled down so significantly once he'd pulled together his perpetual super-hero slumber party, Phil found himself wondering if a lot of the earlier behaviour had its roots in loneliness. "Somewhere," he said thoughtfully, "there's a world where the three of them have worked it out and..."

"I don't need details," Clint cautioned. 

True. There was a fine line between speculation and voyeurism and crossing it was an occupational hazard in a job that spent a lot of time indulging in digital eavesdropping and satellite close-ups. Still, when the possibilities were endless... "Infinite number of details in an infinite number of worlds."

Clint finished his beer. "An infinite number of worlds," he repeated, raising the empty bottle in an exaggerated toast. "And I bet Richards is a dick in all of them."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Darcy Lewis Agent of SHIELD Interlude [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6427756) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod)




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